Still, the fake news format of Broadcasting the Barricades was remarkably similar to Welles’s War of the Worlds, and evidence suggests that reports of Knox’s broadcast may have served as one of Welles’s inspirations. You’ll find the full history of this forgotten experiment in fake news, and its connection to the infamous Martian invasion of 1938, in my upcoming book Broadcast Hysteria: Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds and the Art of Fake News, which comes out on May 5.

For now, though, it’s worth reiterating that history’s first fake news broadcast was the work of a talented satirist who was also a man of deep Catholic faith. I’m sure Stephen Colbert, today’s preeminent fake news satirist and “America’s most famous Catholic,” would approve.